Yesterday I met with fellow Corante blogger Renee Hopkins in SF. She reminded me what a macro-scale disruption neurotechnology represents. I recommend reading her most recent thoughts on innovation and disruption at Idea Flow.

It's All Relative -- IS Chapter Two

Here's another one of those counterintuitive statements that, once you think about it, seems perfectly obvious -- "Few technologies or business ideas are intrinsically sustaining or disruptive in character. Rather, their disruptive impact must be molded into strategy as managers shape the idea into a plan and then implement it." Those who would argue for a process view of innovation already undestand this. Innovation is relative to the context in which it occurs.

And even the type of innovation is contextually relative -- "an idea that is disruptive for one business may be sustaining to another."

This chapter also introduces a third contextual dimension to the disruptive innovation model introduced in Dilemma. In this dimension lie the contexts of consumption and competition that give rise to two different kinds of disruptions -- new-market disruptions in which the new technology, service, or product is aimed at introducing new people into the market, and low-end disruptions that attack the least-profitable and most overserved customers.

I still love the endnotes in this book. Check this out from page 70, in a long note pointing out how wrong people were who complained that Dilemma was flawed because sometimes an industry leader manages to avoid being killed by a disruptive competitor. The authors' response: "When we see an airplane fly, it does not disprove the law of gravity."

Links to Innovator's Solution resources

Her chapter 1 thoughts. And for those who are interested in placing a bet on innovation, MIT Technology Review just launched an Innovation Prediction game. Good luck!